Welcome to my blog titled ‘Five Things’ where you can expect just that - five random musings or reflections from the previous week or so. I’ll also share a quote I find meaningful as a point of focus for the week. For a photo gallery of our life on the road, our pets, and miscellaneous things I find interesting, you can follow me on Instagram @tabithalord.
So here are this week’s five things, starting with the quote of the week…
“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.” - Dalai Lama
I think I’ve mentioned here that I wrote a horror flash fiction story for school, workshopped it with my class, and sold it to Tales to Terrify, a fun, creepy podcast. Well that story is finally live, and you can find it here: MONSTER. A couple of things… It’s short. Flash fiction work is generally under a thousand words, and even the audio version is only three minutes long. But it’s brutal. This is a Frankenstein’s monster story with an AI twist, and in the end, everyone’s really a monster. Approach with caution, or skip if it’s not your thing.
My second summer session of grad school is underway! The month of June is considered a ‘reading period’ in preparation for our time together on campus at residency in July. But this year’s schedule is a little different since we have a lot to prepare for residency in addition to the completed reading assignments. I’m currently working on a synopsis, which is a two page summary of the entire novel and the bane of most writers’ existence, an outline, which is just what it sounds like, and the first five thousand words of the manuscript. While it’s a lot, it’s also really exciting to be working on my dragon story.
We’re on the road again for the summer, currently camped out in Las Vegas where it is very, very hot! We flew back to Rhode Island for a quick weekend full of events, and now I’m back with my nose to the grindstone working on the above mentioned school work. We’ll be heading to Moab, Utah next week to check out some of the National Parks we missed our first time there, and then on to Colorado for about a month. I’ll try to remember to post more pictures!
If any of you follow my alter ego Maggie Clare, and read the steamy stuff I publish under that pen name, you may have heard I just finished writing a contemporary rom-com. Usually my romance novels have a suspense sub-plot featuring serial killers, cartels, stalkers, or some other nasty bad guy mucking things up for our couple. But my latest story features an emotional support dog, a runaway bride, a hot firefighter, some angsty heartbreak, and a happily-ever-after ending of course! The story evolved from a piece of short fiction I wrote for school. I liked the bones of it so much, I decided to try writing a long form version. If you’d like a sneak peek, head over to my Dear Maggie blog and check it out!